Living in Loserville

I feel that one of the main contributing factors to being forced to live life as a loser has to do with where my parents decided to make their living. I grew up in Artesia, NM. It's a small town in the southeastern part of the state. At any given time, the population would fluctuate between 9,500 and 12,000 people. When I lived in Denver, I used to work at a concert venue that could seat 18,000 people. It's funny to think about the entire population of my hometown all together in one place with plenty of elbow room.

Now, there were advantages to growing up in a small town. One was that you felt safer as a youth. There's not any traffic and you can get to where you want to in about five minutes, even on a bicycle. Even though I will be making disparaging remarks about the local educational system in future posts, someone of average intelligence can get a decent education there (or at least, when I went to school there).

I guess the number one disadvantage to living in a small town is that, even though you may have felt safer, youth was despised there. Similar to the experience I had in my family, if you were young and unmarried, you couldn't get any respect. If you were a teenager, you had two choices for fun: You could either sit at home and watch TV, or go out and get into trouble. In fact, the police force would chase down any teenager in a car out after 10pm.

Growing up in a small town can also stunt your ambitions. I never felt the desire to try to go to an Ivy League school, or Stanford or someplace else that was prestigious. I never thought about the possibility of coming up with a great idea that would result in me making millions of dollars. For a period in my life, I thought I was destined to live in small towns forever.

Even though youth was despised in the town, the majority of Artesia's culture came from the public school system. It was the school bands, choirs and drama clubs that would perform at the local auditorium on a regular basis. For the most part, the only other performances we got were from the Community Concert circuit and traveling church shows. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that a local arts group got organized enough to put on their own community theatre productions.

Now, let's say you wanted to try your hand at being a rock musician. If you were in a band that wrote and performed its own material, there was nowhere to play in town. The bars rarely had live music, and if they did, they were cover bands. And there was nowhere else to play in any town within a 200-mile radius. It was pointless to try to start a band. There was no possible way anyone could pay attention.

When I moved to a larger city as an adult, I was astonished at how many people in the local music scene were teenagers. And they were able to perform on a regular basis and had large followings. I felt so cheated. Trying to form a band as an adult is much more complicated because your musical tastes become so much more diverse by then that it's hard to find other people starting out who want to be on the same page as you.

This is not to completely disrespect the importance of small towns. A small town is a great place to spend the early part of your childhood. However, once you turn 12, it just isn't enough.